Comic 172 - Best Served Blue, Page 16

Author Notes:

Think this is the first of the move toward giving Grant outlines when he moves out of the way of something. Decided to do that both as something of a time-saving thing, and also to give him something to kind of set him apart in his sudden movements. Jenny has her blur, Andy has the Daredevil thing (even if Starchild does that a fair bit too), and now Grant has this.

So yeah, here we get a proper look at this particular member of the team. I remember there was some back-and-forth between us trying to decide what all to do with him to make him stand out. Forget who threw out the medal body thing but the device around his neck and the Kano-meets-Two-Face head were my ideas I believe.

How did Kano's ending in MK vs. DCU not have something to do with Two-Face, come to think of it? Actually, why was Kano in that game? Not as out of place as Baraka, who brought absolutely nothing to the story and was broken as hell, but the best I could think of is to give Deathstroke a counterpart. Though funny enough Baraka's more of one to Deathstroke than Kano gameplay-wise.

Anyway, funny thing about this ensuing fight is everyone's kind of paired up by who they bunk with. Naturally, Andy and Valerie wind up working together as the ones who don't fit that bill.

This fight between Grant, Nicky, and Chiko-tan is easily my favorite of the little mini-battles we get in this chapter. Songbird and Putty are really fun to write together, they've got a great hero/sidekick air together.

For reference- Chiko-tan here is not a cyborg. Chiko-tan is a 100% artificial lifeform. He was easily the last member of the group to be thought up by us, hence the back-and-fourth we had on his details. That skin on his face and hands is an artificial covering.

He also has a chainsaw. Why does he have a chainsaw? Because if you built a robot to kill people, would you NOT give it a chainsaw? I didn't think so. So shut up.

Grant's visual effect like this works nicely. Does differentiate him from Andy and Jenny well enough.

Though believe it or not, the bunkmates thing was unexpected. I paired Nicky and Grant together immediately since I wanna push for the partnership/best friends thing on them, and the others just feel into place. Andy and Val could use more time to interact.

Comments:

I find it extremely amusing that Songbird can completely geek out and stay perfectly focused on the fight at the same time. How did you come up with the robots name and did Shinobu build him from scratch?

Yeah, love that aspect about Songbird. ^^ How can someone not geek out about something like this? C'mon, crazy chainsaw robot.

But yeah, Shinobu build Chiko-tan, though this is his first time in combat. I actually got the name from Negima. ^^ Was a bad guy who had this big, intimidating name, and Nodoka used a new power to find out his real name which was "Chiko-tan."